TP-Link TD-W8980

The TP-Link TD-W8980 is an ADSL Annex A and VDSL router. Beside the wifi hardware, the router is very similar to the TD-W8970. The OEM source code is available at: GPL_TD-W8980.tar.gz.

The 5GHz WAVE300 chipset is not yet supported by OpenWrt. Everything else should work.

Do not upgrade to the 12.10.2013 (or newer) TP-Link firmware if you intend to switch to OpenWrt via the TP-Link webinterface. Starting with 12.10.2013 the TP-Link webinterface accepts only RSA signed firmware images with the v3 header.

The RSA Signature is not enforced/validated by u-boot. Therefore, flashing over serial & bootloader still works.

Photos

Serial

Press t on the console to interrupt U-Boot autobooting.
Logon through serial by pressing Enter and using: admin/1234.

UART Boot

Temporarily connect the left side of R225 to GND (confirmed working; the image above has the wrong pad circled – use the pad immediately to the left of the circle in the image), to get into UART mode. You should see a message similar to this: